The goal of this project is to promote nanoscale biological and biomedical applications that utilize Atomic Force Microscopy. Clearly the future of these technologies is highly reliant on the development of next generation, sensitive, high speed Atomic Force Microscope probes. We are proposing to develop such AFM probes that are optimized for enhanced molecular characterization and biological imaging. These probes will have reduced viscous damping, higher scan rates, and improved sensitivity over current commercially available probes. Additionally these probes will be mass producible, usable in standard commercial AFMs and will be valuable for use in biological application where optical path (i.e. AFM/optical microscopy) and access to the tip area are important (i.e. AFM/electrophysiology). PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: NOT AVAILABLE